Another week has come and gone

Mon 1/28/2013 4:46 PM

Well, another week has come and gone, and I cant believe how fast this week flew by, honestly, it scares me at times haha. By the way, this week I finally received the package from dearelder, and wow, the cookies and the beef jerky were soooo good! Also, I love the calendar of temples, so amazing and it is awesome to look at so many different temples. My companion was shocked by how many are in Utah haha and even more so when I told him about how long it takes me to get to each one, probably because the closest temple to him is 6 hours away in the US, count your many blessings right? So the big news of the week is that tomorrow, Tuesday, Elder Russel M. Nelson is coming to Mexico and is going to talk to all of the missionaries in DF, and luckily my companion and I are in DF haha, so we will get to go to Aragon, where the temple is, and listen to an Apostle speak directly at us missionaries, if you cant tell, I'm pretty excited about it. 

So this week I learned alot about what it means to really love someone the way that Christ loves us. So this week we had been focusing on one investigator named Juan, who is a psychologist, and ya, he is super duper smart. Anyways, hermano Bravo had been a Testigo de Jehova, or a Jehovah's witness, for almost all of his life, and he did full time proselyting for more than 6 years when he was about my age right now. The problem is that this church doesn't allow their congregation study certain careers in the university, and psychology is one of them, so he was basically excommunicated from this church, but it doesn't mean that he doesn't still know the whole bible by basically memory. Anyways, so one night we were just knocking doors cause all of our plans fell through, we knocked on one door, and the neighbor, this hermano Bravo, answered the door, and said (in broken English) Elder, come in please! Well obviously we were excited, so we entered in his home and began to talk. Apparently he had almost gotten baptized about 1 year ago, but when he was about to enter the water he all of a sudden backed out and hadn't visited with the missionaries for a whole year after that. Well obviously that got us excited. Anyways, that happened about a month ago, so we decided that we were going to give this week one huge push with as many lideres as we could to try to get him to commit to baptism, and wow, some of the most powerful lessons that I have ever been in. The last one we had with our District Leader was something special. We realized that we were focused on what he needed to do, and not on the blessings that he would receive if he did get baptized, so we repented and did such. The spirit was seriously so strong, there were parts were all three of us were tearin up. This is when I learned what it means to love someone the way Christ loves us. As it talks about in 3 Nefi when Christ came to the Americas, there are a couple instances when it talks about how Christ's joy was so great that he began to cry, that He loved the people so much that He, the Son of the Living God, cried because of His love for the people. Now, we now that Christ loves us more than we can possibly comprehend, but it is amazing to start to feel this same love for someone, but at the same time, as representatives of Christ, sometimes we walk in His path and are rejected, even when someone feels the Spirit and knows the truth, and that is what happened this night. Bravo decided not to get baptized, to wait even longer, even when he knew very clearly that by not excepting to come unto Christ, to progress, is the same as rejecting him (Mathew 10 i think). I've learned though that we all do this.  By not repenting, by not changing our lives everyday to come closer to Christ, we are rejecting the Atonement and its powers to save us. Even though we have been baptized, confirmed, and some of us entered in the temple, this doesn't mean that we are done, or anywhere near done. It is just as easy for some of us to not read the scriptures everyday as it is for someone to decline baptism, and the first is worst that the last. It is just as easy for us to not go to church one day, as it is for someone to smoke a cigarette. That is mostly what I have learned this week. That when he have light, sometimes we think that we have sufficient to enter into the Celestial Kingdom, and we reject further light, we don't read the scriptures EVERYDAY (look in Preach my Gospel chapter four, it is a commandment), or go to church EVERY WEEK (there is a reason why it is the 4th commandment out of the big 10). As members of the church, it is even more urgent that we repent quickly, that we change quickly, that we get back on the straight and narrow and as dad taught me several times throughout ym and that I am just beginning to understand, cling to the iron rod, not just hold on, but cling to the word of God, the Scriptures (not just the Book of Mormon, but the Bible, D and C, and the Pearl of Great Price). If we don't do these things everyday, we are in more jeopardy of loosing our salvation that someone who closes the door on us saying ´´Gracias, soy Catolico´´, because we know better. Take the Amalekites for example, and read what the Prophets say about them.

Well, no more time, sorry!, Love you all, thank you  for all your love and letters!

Love, 

Elder Noel